A Few Things Whovian

 Unless you've been avoiding the Internet, or just plain don't care (honestly, even if you don't care, you've probably still caught wind. The Doctor is kind of a big deal these days), you've probably noticed that the next incarnation of the Doctor from Doctor Who has been announced and it's none other than Peter Capaldi.

We're going to cover a few Who-things now, so keep up.

First up, Mr. Capaldi. I personally like the choice. He seems like he's got some great range and I'm excited to see the Doctor not be a young guy for the first time since the 2005 relaunch. I also think it'll push Moffat into some better writing because he won't be able to hit a block and then say, "Okay Matt, jump around and act crazy to kill some time." Not a knock to either one (I adore Eleven), but it seemed the longer Smith was around, the more Moffat used his energy as a crutch to take up run-time. Additionally, one of the strongest parts of the Tennant-Tate year was the fact that there was zero romantic tension, something that New-Who has leaned on a bit too much. In fairness, Eleven and Clara have largely avoided that, but I think we can be sure that 55-yr old Capaldi and 27-yr old Coleman won't be pulling the TARDIS over to do any smooching.

Creeds and Killers

Assassin's Creed has been a series that has packed a lot of surprises. Many of them are the kind none of us every expected. I'll throw out a quick spoiler alert here but since the game is half a decade old I feel like you're reading at your own risk here. The first spoiler was that the game was not straight historical fiction as some of the first trailers led us to believe, but instead a sci-fi heavy outing using genetic memory and a precursor civilization to tell an epic of human survival.

The second surprise was that Ubisoft would stop in the middle of their numbered trilogy to give Ezio his own trilogy. Most surprising to me at least is that at no point has it felt like they're playing for time. I've grown to really love Ezio as a character and his own trilogy-within-a-trilogy has done a lot to flesh out both his and Altair's characters and really set us up for a great finale.

I just finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations. I took it down to the wire, of course. I'm now prepped and ready for Assassin's Creed III to drop on Tuesday.  I ended up really enjoying Revelations, despite some issues. The first issue is the fact that Ezio is like 60 and running around on rooftops and parachuting from towers to save damsels in distress. The second, is that by the end of the game you're doing all of this in damn-near full plate armor. The effect is so jarring that I ended up switching back to one of the early-game armors that was much lighter just so I could continue to suspend disbelief. It's not even believable for a man in his prime to lug that much weight across rooftops, let alone one of Ezio's...experience. The revolutionary setting gives me hope that Connor won't be swinging through the trees in full plate by the end of Assassin's Creed III.

The last problem I had with AC:R was that it moves a little slow for awhile. But boy howdy does the finish make up for it. The back third of the game is a treat. Some of the best sequences the series has offered up so far, including turning a carriage chase, generally one of my least favorite parts of the Assassin's Creed series, into one of the most fun AC moments to date.

I'm even more excited for ACIII now that I'm caught up. Tuesday can't come soon enough.

Some Notes: Ezio will probably go down as one of my favorite all time video game characters, and Connor has some serious work to do if he hopes to displace him as my favorite AC protagonist. Not bad for a guy that I didn't even like in his debut game.

Now That's Good Televison

Tonight I continued my time honored tradition of discovering a wonderful show long after most of the world has already discovered it.  Tonight's installment is The Newsroom, speaking of course of the HBO drama from Aaron Sorkin, not the Canadian comedy from the CBC.

Normally I wouldn't talk about just some new show that I liked, but this was the first show in quite a while that actually wowed me. I've enjoyed previous Sorkin shows, perhaps not as much as I should, but still found them to be entertaining and usually quite thought-provoking, especially considering the rest of the TV fair that's out there.  The Newsroom really grabbed me though, much moreso than his previous offerings. This is a little surprising for me. My gut says I should enjoy The West Wing the most, given my poli-sci background. But The Newsroom. Just wow. If the opening scene (which most people have probably seen on YouTube or around the web, it features Jeff Daniels detailing the decline of America as the supposed "Best Country in the World") doesn't grab you and get you thinking, good luck finding anything on TV that does.

It's the kind of show that will inspire kids to be news anchors. Or at least it might, if it wasn't on HBO and they were allowed to watch it.

Full disclosure, all of this gushing is following my viewing of the first episode. I'm at least level headed enough to get a few more episodes in before I write up a more thorough entry for the recommendations page. But I've got a good feeling that my feelings on it aren't really going to decline.

Some Notes: I'll just stop making promises about posts, okay? It should be clear that I'd really like to maintain this blog, but life keeps standing in my way. I'll continue to work on it. Hopefully we'll get there someday.

Housekeeping

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Just a quick bit of house keeping.  Firstly, the site has gone through quite a few different looks in the last couple days as I settle on something I like going forward. Large changes should be done, but there may still be a couple of coloring and font changes coming. Nothing that's a particularly big deal.  I'm very picky when it comes to this sort of thing and I change my mind a lot, so this sort of thing is to be expected.

Secondly. I've been away from the blog for quite a long time, so the recommendations page had gotten quite stale. That is now partially rectified with a new recommendation that I won't detail here because then you won't click through to that page. And that's just lazy.

There'll be a couple more coming in the next week or so, as I work myself back into regular blogging and keeping this site up to date. Enjoy.

Some Notes: Updates will hopefully be more regular going forward. I'm not going to get into saying every certain day of the week or anything, but hopefully there should be something new to take in at least once a week, though there'll probably be exceptions to that.

New to Who

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Yesterday, Chris Hardwick posted this video encouraging folks to post their New to Who stories on Twitter. If you're having trouble keeping up (which by now you should've watched that video, that's the story of the first time you experienced Doctor Who.

I tweeted mine earlier, but I wanted to post a longer one, and you can't stop me.  

Doctor Who was something I didn't even become tangentially aware of until my senior year of high school. Even then it was a weird British show that a friend's dad watched. This was a time when the relaunch had just happened. David Tennant had yet to play the Doctor.  It was still years before we would find out how cool bow-ties were. I never watched it, and I didn't think I was missing a thing.

A Doctor Wedding Reception

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--Spoilers for Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song to follow. If you'd like a quick look at what I thought with no spoilers, skip ahead by clicking here. --

This year was a first for me. After spending the last year watching all of the Doctor Who since the 2005 revival, I had finally caught up enough this fall to actually follow the show when it returned from hiatus.  I've talked before about the benefits and disadvantages of watching a show during it's airing vs watching it all later, but I enjoyed being able to stay current on Doctor Who. 

Staying current allowed me a spoiler free experience in watching last night's season (or series, if you prefer) finale, The Wedding of River Song.  Here's what I thought.

Tom Brady Casts Magic Missle for 1d4+1 of Damage

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Of course Tom Brady gets extra dice
because of stats bonuses.

Fall is finally upon us, and that means all of the major American sports that aren't baseball (or currently striking, I'm looking at you basketball) are finally starting once more.  As a nerd with an inclination toward the sporting world, this also means it's time to get my fantasy sports teams in order. This, of course, led me to an interesting realization. Fantasy Football, and indeed, fantasy sports in general are possibly the greatest trick ever pulled on society.

Suppose I told you that I spent the week looking at the stats of my team (party) in order to choose the best combination to defeat my opponent. There's skill involved on the player's part to be sure, but a large amount of luck also goes into being successful (a roll of the dice you might say).  I'm either talking about Dungeons & Dragons or Fantasy Sports.

Blu-ray Blues: A Star Wars Tale

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The release of Star Wars on Blu-ray is practically upon us and it has created some mixed feelings.  This should be a joyous event. This is my very favorite fictional property of all time, being released in the very best quality available to home viewing audiences up to this point. I should be thrilled. Instead, George Lucas has gone all Special Edition on us again and forced new changes to the movies I love.

I think they're stupid, but that's not really the point.  My greatest displeasure from this whole ordeal is that there is quite simply -nothing- that I can do about it.  I want to watch Star Wars in high definition. If I want to do so, I must give George my money.  Every time this happens I run into this problem.  And this is why George doesn't care. There's tremendous fan outrage every time he tinkers with the Original movies or makes a new movie that people don't like, but guess what? Everyone (including me) still fills his pockets with infinity billion dollars and the cycle continues on.  There's no alternative to Star Wars. This isn't a, "computer manufacturer A has upset me for the last time, so I'm switching to computer manufacturer B" sort of situation.

Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly?

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The Doctor hates linear time.

I've said it before. I'm rarely on time when it comes to being interested in things. I am not a nerd hipster. Try as I might, it's just impossible to catch everything when as it comes out.

This, of course, has some pretty serious benefits that may not be readily apparent. If said interest is in serial form, then there is zero wait time between new installments. Reading a comic series while it's current? Hope you're cool with the month-long gap before the next issue. Watching a show? Have a good week. Hope the show isn't on hiatus.

I read the entirety of Y: the Last Man years after it's run. Yes, I am horribly late on a fantastic series, but I read all 60 issues at my leisure. No publisher-enforced delays.

I watched all ten years of Stargate: SG-1 after it had finished. Those silly cliffhangers that SG-1 loved for it's last 5 years? Yeah, I've got the next episode right here. Let's just keep going.

Nuka Colas For Everyone

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Awhile back, A tremendously well done fan film called Fallout: Nuka Break hit the internet.  For the uninitiated, it was based on the video game series Fallout.  It was phenomenally well done, and if we're being honest, likely the closest we'll ever come to seeing good live-action Fallout.

A lot of people said a lot of really nice things about it. The people behind it, Wayside Creations, immediately started taking donations in the hopes that they would be able to make a series of it. It would appear that they were successful, because low and behold the first episode of the spankin' new Fallout: Nuka Break series has hit the internet. 

TARDISes Are Forever.

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Can we all just take a moment to consider this possibility: James Bond is a Time Lord.

Here's what we know. James Bond has been kicking villainous ass since the 1960s. He looks different every few years. This leaves us with only a few possible explanations.

Odds and Ends

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Bit of a scattered post for today, we're gonna cover a few things. There's been a lot of first looks hitting the internet, so lets proceed and get our first looks at them.

First up, the first photos of "Catwoman" in The Dark Knight Rises have gone up online. I put Catwoman in quotation marks because...well, you'll see. Anyway, here she is:

Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman

I'm pretty underwhelmed by it, much like I have been with the few shots we've seen of Bane. This may be an interesting character that I'm looking at, but it's not Catwoman. I don't like it, but I didn't like Spider-man's new movie threads, and those are growing on me, so we'll see.

Alliterative Aliases Are Abundant

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If comic books love anything, it's alliterative names. Matt Murdock. Clark Kent. Lois Lane. Lex Luthor. Wally West. Reed Richards. Bruce Banner. Peter Parker.

They of the alliterative names now have a new playmate on the playground: Miles Morales.

Miles Morales will be taking up the mantle of Spider-man in Marvel's Ultimate Comics imprint.  Miles Morales is half-black, half-hispanic.  The media, totally diligent and certainly not in anyway sensationalist,  caught wind of a couple key phrases and is turning this story into something of a circus. Those phrases are: 'Spider-man is dead' and 'Spider-man is black.'

Wherein Introductions Are Made

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I'm new to this whole Blogger thing. I started this as a continuation of a previous blog I was writing over on Tumblr.  I was enjoying writing it, but Tumblr just didn't feel like the right fit for what I wanted to do, or for getting much of an audience.  If you stumble across this blog, feel free to check out http://nerdbabble.tumblr.com/ to get an idea of what you can expect here in the future.


Beyond that, regular (to semi-regular) updates should begin tomorrow. I hope there's something here for you to enjoy.